Cardinal Timothy Dolan startled by Pope Benedict XVI's resignation
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, leads anniversary Mass at Immaculate Conception parish on November 17, 2012, in the Staten Island borough of New York City. /Getty Images
New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan says he was as startled as the rest of the world about Pope Benedict XVI's announcement that he will resign later this month due to failing health.
Dolan says he feels a special bond with the pope because he was the one that appointed him archbishop of New York.
Dolan, speaking on the "Today" show Monday, says he wears the ring and the cross the pope gave him.
In an official statement, Dolan said: "We are sad that he will be resigning but grateful for his eight years of selfless leadership as successor of St. Peter. He delighted our beloved United States of America when he visited Washington and New York in 2008. As a favored statesman he greeted notables at the White House. As a spiritual leader he led the Catholic community in prayer at Nationals Park, Yankee Stadium and St. Patrick's Cathedral. As a pastor feeling pain in a stirring, private meeting at the Vatican nunciature in Washington, he brought a listening heart to victims of sexual abuse by clerics."
The pope announced Monday that he would resign Feb. 28 because he's simply too infirm to carry on.
Dolan says the conclave to elect to a new pope would do well to look for the kinds of qualities Pope Benedict possessed: knowledge about the world, a theological depth, personal piety and linguistic talent.
"He unified Catholics and reached out to schismatic groups in hopes of drawing them back to the church. More unites us than divides us, he said by word and deed," Dolan said in his statement.
What Dolan has not yet addressed is the possibility that he may be a candidate when the conclave of cardinals meets to pick the next pope in March.
Professor Chester Gillis, a theology professor at Georgetown University and the dean of Georgetown College, told "CBS This Morning," that the church may choose a cardinal of a less "advanced age" and that while the possibility is "remote," Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, could be a candidate.
For three years now, he's been the Archbishop of New York, the nation's most prominent pulpit. As Morley Safer reported for a 2011 "60 Minutes" profile (watch it at left), he's also been called the American Pope after his election to head the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Dolan was born in St. Louis, the son of an aircraft engineer. Dolan entered seminary at age 14 and destined for stardom: secretary to the papal nuncio, rector of the American seminary in Rome, and archbishop of Milwaukee, where he won over the flock when he gave a homily wearing a Green Bay Packers' Cheesehead.
His mission - as he sees it - is to change a perception of the church that ranges from negative to irrelevant. He wants to see the old church made new with zero tolerance of wayward priests and an emphasis on what he calls the most pure and noble experience Catholicism offers.
Likely, due to media and the 'newsworthy' merit of the immoral acts of priests, Our United States appears to be the epicenter of this abuse, but I suspect likely not. Sexual slavery has been practiced all over the globe and ignored. This very real and ugly practice by a very small fraction is no less the same kind of ratio as the genocidal practice by one Slobidan Milosevich to have killed thousands for being Muslim in Yugoslavia. That did not make his election illegal but brought on a war that resulted in the creation of Croatia, Boznia...and Slobidan's own trial at the World Court. I submit there is a body to deal with these Crimes Against Humanity, and before we toss a few priests into the dock, perhaps we ought to put a few Bush Administration people in there for 'wars of aggression' that killed thousands for oil.....ignored the Geneva Conventions as well as the US Constitution for legal process. If we are unwilling, the World Court can and will address it for priests as well as for former US officials engaged in war profiteering. If it is immoral for a priest to seek absolution for his immoral acts, how much more so immoral is it for the Bush Administration to continue to ignore its moral failures in the deaths of thousands in Iraq and in the middle east.
Any sadness over events of the Pope resignation should be joy instead. The Pope has wisely choosen a path long not used in resignation to let a younger man lead the church. There had been a long time between such leadership when enfeebled papal patriarchs were remaining until death. Pope Benedict is truly more concerned with the church, and his decision is not only a strong one for the Catholic Church, but indicates a wise and prudent papal decision whose health concerns are overburdening his choices and vision. God Bless him.
As for politically active Bishops/Cardinals whose movements of late take them into politics instead of leadership of movements towards denuciations of death penalties and making a right to life movement coalesce into a constitutional amendment....the embrace of the Republican Party is wrong.
Governor, then President Bush...demonstrated the hypocrisy of courting the Christian right while employing the death penalty repeatedly. The war was a foregone conclusion without the advent of 9/11 for such an admninistration. The evils done in the name of democracy are truly great, and the Church should not be embracing any political party that has and continues to be almost the same brand of National Socialist Patriotism that CRUSHED the democratic institutions in Germany following WW I.
We will have a return to an Italian pope, if conservatism is to have a rein in Rome and rebuild the church from the inside. Clearly, the Roman Catholic Church is being attacked by governments for acts of individual priests in immoral acts. The Church is older and pre-dates these governments and should NOT bow to either pressure from outside or fracture from inside. Surely, politicking by Bishops for political parties is the wrong approach totally. If ones wants to know what is going on in Rome....don't ask the US Council of Bishops...ask Rome. Clearly, the road to making change in the USA for Catholics is going to be with a petition drive for a Constitutional Amendment for a Right to Life...and not promises and opinions of politicians and Bishops who coddle candidates and seek to get voters for 'their pick' for the electorate. Do not tell me how to vote, Bishop Dolan. Instead, use your voice to announce good news.
The United States is the epicenter of priest-on-child rape and sexual abuse. An American pope is not likely to resolve that huge and decades-long problem. Ratzinger did not address it, and it just may be time for a completely new, different, and humble pope -- perhaps one from the continent of Africa.
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As for politically active Bishops/Cardinals whose movements of late take them into politics instead of leadership of movements towards denuciations of death penalties and making a right to life movement coalesce into a constitutional amendment....the embrace of the Republican Party is wrong.
Governor, then President Bush...demonstrated the hypocrisy of courting the Christian right while employing the death penalty repeatedly. The war was a foregone conclusion without the advent of 9/11 for such an admninistration. The evils done in the name of democracy are truly great, and the Church should not be embracing any political party that has and continues to be almost the same brand of National Socialist Patriotism that CRUSHED the democratic institutions in Germany following WW I.
We will have a return to an Italian pope, if conservatism is to have a rein in Rome and rebuild the church from the inside. Clearly, the Roman Catholic Church is being attacked by governments for acts of individual priests in immoral acts. The Church is older and pre-dates these governments and should NOT bow to either pressure from outside or fracture from inside. Surely, politicking by Bishops for political parties is the wrong approach totally. If ones wants to know what is going on in Rome....don't ask the US Council of Bishops...ask Rome. Clearly, the road to making change in the USA for Catholics is going to be with a petition drive for a Constitutional Amendment for a Right to Life...and not promises and opinions of politicians and Bishops who coddle candidates and seek to get voters for 'their pick' for the electorate. Do not tell me how to vote, Bishop Dolan. Instead, use your voice to announce good news.